DEVELOPMENTAL PROJECTS PROGRAM I. INTRODUCTION The goals of the Developmental Project Program of the Skin Cancer SPORE are 1) to provide short-term funding for innovative and meritorious research projects in skin cancer research that have the potential to evolve into translational studies across the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center (DFHCC) and, more broadly, the Harvard medical community, and 2) to ensure a continuous supply of high quality and innovative translational research to complement existing and new projects in the Skin Cancer SPORE. These projects may be investigator initiated laboratory or clinical research, or they might be designed to create a shared resource or enhance the research infrastructure of the SPORE. The Developmental Project Program will rely on the infrastructure created by the Administrative Core (Core 1) to accomplish these goals. The process will involve: 1) Identification of promising areas of translational research related to skin cancer 2) Solicitation of high quality applications addressing these and other areas 3) Selection of worthy Projects for funding 4) Provision of funds to the Projects 5) Evaluation of progress and accomplishments of the Projects including the possibility of transition into full Project status 6) Evaluation of the success of the Developmental Program as a whole This process has served us well, and three new full projects in this competitive renewal (Projects 3,4, and 5) are based upon scientific results that emerged from developmental projects. Similar processes are currently in place and working well for the other DFHCC SPOREs. The specific steps in this process are described in more detail below.